


Heart on Your Sleeve

by FlitShadowflame



Series: Bagginshield Soulmate Series [1]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlitShadowflame/pseuds/FlitShadowflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by a Hobbit Kink Meme prompt: "[O]f all of the peoples of Middle Earth, only Hobbits had their soulmate written on their wrists. Unfortunately, Bilbo's traversed the whole of the Shire and Bree to find his soulmate, and they're nowhere to be found! Twenty years later, the Company finds their way to his door."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart on Your Sleeve

Not many took note of the small, quiet people of the Shire. They lived happy, simple lives of joy and plenty, but rarely left their own lands and never grew to any great fame.

Hobbits made no secret of the meaning of the marks on their skin, but few bothered to ask, and the marks were subtle and rarely displayed. Even Gandalf, who had cultivated many long friendships with some of the more prominent hobbits, didn't learn the truth of the matter until quite late in his acquaintance with Belladonna Baggins, nee Took.

He had seen glimpses of spidery letters on various wrists, but Belladonna was the first to provide him with a clear view of one of the marks, as she poured him tea. His eyes caught on the script and he couldn't help but read the letters...

"Bungo Baggins...good gracious me," he blinked up at her, surprised. "Is that some hobbit custom, to tattoo spouses with each other's names?"

She blinked right back at him. "Mister Gandalf, all hobbits are born with the mark of them who shares their soul. Here," she plucked her toddler-boy, Bilbo, from his chair and offered his wrist for Gandalf to see. "I've never heard of a hobbit named Oakenshield, though, so perhaps my boy's intended is from a family in Bree or sommat."

Gandalf needed a few heavy pulls on his pipe before he felt composed enough to speak. "And, ah, what if he doesn't meet this...Thorin?"

Belladonna went sheet-white and she covered the babe's ears. "What an ill wish! And him still a tyke! I've never heard of a full-grown hobbit not meeting his or her intended, not in all my years. And if one dies of accident or illness, the mark fades and the other is never far behind...even if they've not met. Children are precious but life has its hardships even in the Shire; my cousin lost his mark when he was barely sixteen. He was found in the pond the next day. The other lad had died in a farming accident, we found out later."

"Other lad?" Gandalf said delicately. Bilbo was trying his very best to steal Gandalf's pipe.

"Surely a Wizard such as yourself knows love comes in many guises," Belladonna teased, tickling her boy's belly to distract him. "There are little ways to guess about one's intended, from the writing. Flourishes and the weight of the strokes, that are said to signify gender, or wealth, or beauty. I never put much store in them, myself, but every mother tries to know what sort of person is meant for her child."

"And what can you divine from Bilbo's...inscription?"

Belladonna kissed the boy's forehead. "He'll have a strong, handsome boy's love. This ragged sort of scribble is supposed to mean hardship but I prefer to think of it as 'adventure.' But... I'm not sure what to make of the quality of the characters themselves. They're legible enough, but such strange letterforms!"

"Indeed," Gandalf hummed, though to his mind they looked quite like dwarvish runes. He puffed on the pipe and said nothing more on the matter.

+

Bilbo Baggins had quite given up on meeting any hobbit named Thorin Oakenshield by the time he was 35. He had explored to the very bounds of the Shire and even, with great trepidation, traveled from Buckland to Bree in search of word among those strange cityhobbits of anyone, anyone at all, named Oakenshield.

He settled into a sad, solitary life in Bag End, resenting the pity of other gentlehobbits, and missing his mother's quiet understanding. She had never pressured him to search harder, but neither did she let him give in to despair. After her death, he found it much harder to keep up a brave face.

Gandalf's strange visit distracted him from his melancholy of being 50 and still with such a large and empty hobbit hole, but it was as nothing to the shock of the next evening. The first dozen dwarves were strange and alarming enough, but Bilbo quite lost his head when the last was introduced as Thorin, a name he knew only from his own wrist. He was too stunned to say anything intelligent at all, but his heart hurt most sorely when this Thorin disparaged his worth.

Surely he was not meant for a dwarf, though. They were all sons-of-someone, and this lost prince was hardly the type for so humble a name as Oakenshield. Surely. It was just a coincidence.

As the evening wore on he grew increasingly alarmed and increasingly certain that it was not a coincidence after all.

He would be in danger, possibly deadly danger, should he choose to accompany these...dwarves. And they did not, he could see already, have inscriptions of their own, so Thorin must not know - must never know, in fact. Staying away was the only sensible solution. He had been heartsick with worry and uncertainty for fifty years, now he knew what might await and it only made him feel worse. What if the dwarf did not understand? And surely a prince needed a suitable bride, to produce heirs, or some such? What if the inscription was only a guideline after all, and everyone simply took it much too seriously? Perhaps Bilbo was simply ill-suited to the gentlehobbits of the Shire and even beyond, or his heart was more ambitious than he knew. Maybe he could settle, eventually, with someone else. Or go on living as he had done, solitary and peaceful and far from orcs and dragons and goblins and danger.

His sleep that night was surprisingly peaceful, for all the upsets of the previous day. But when he woke there was a soul-wrenching agony of loss he had never before felt, and it brought him to his knees.

Ah. Perhaps that was why those who lost their inscriptions shortly died. Come to think of it, he'd never seen matched hobbits stray far from each other, especially not in the early days of courtship. He'd never realized it was because of...the acute physical distress such partings caused.

Strangely, once he'd resolved to follow Thorin, his head cleared and the burning pain was soothed. He signed the contract quickly and threw some necessities into a bag and then he simply ran, ran in what his heart knew was the right direction because the drumming rhythm of _Thorinthorinthorin_ seemed to have replaced the beat of his heart, and he thought he should know how to find Thorin even if the dwarf was lost to all other knowledge.

He would just see where this adventure led him. He planned on no grand confessions, nothing like that, but clearly his heart could not handle being left behind. Maybe Thorin would not make him pine in secret for too long. Maybe even a fifty year old bachelor had a chance at love after all.

**Author's Note:**

> [Link to the original prompt and fill.](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/702.html?thread=362174#t362174)


End file.
